I see a couple here, and got an in game message from one. I don't remember many newbs last time I was around. Encouraging.

... And is this the cooperative server they try first?

no1 sane tries team 1st.

there are some newcomers who play 1 or several sets depending how well they perform and how they get treated.

most of us are vets from Earth: 2025 lol. and have been playing a good while.. you would find joining a big clan on another server far more beneficial a learning experience.. unless i make a hosting page for us and fill a training section and you take the time to follow it.. i would have to urge you to try to learn the farmer or casher strats before trying to tackle the more complicated netting ventures as well :P especially on this stunted server

vr ain't that newb although his title is new member.

...I think Link was being funny?

never can be sure especially in n00belf's case since he got addicted to babymaking.

ive never played earth empires before

this will be my first set in team

goodluck to all

lol@trifecto

I played the team server last set and was actually able to net very well peacefully. I thought I would get trolled as an untagged like I usually do in the alliance set

if you are capable to retal then you are left alone.

VicRattlehead
New Member

LOL ive known vic for yeas

He's still a nOOb, his nick says so!!

When does that go away anyway?

I think you need to enter some validation code sent to your email, been long I can't remember :-(

just keep posting lol. it goes away when you hit a certain post #

it doesn't go away until qz fixes eternal newbs-bug and your guess is as good as mine when that gets fixed.

I am a noob. Here is a bit of my noob experience:

After signing up, I tried Tournament server first. I think I chose tournament because, at the time, it was just starting. I figured that if this is like other turn-based games I've played, it is better to join closer to when a round starts than to join a round mid-way through.

Anyway, after reading through help pages, the Wiki, and forum posts, I decided to play Indy-Communism strat, producing lots of spies, since from what I was reading, spies seemed pretty important and particularly effective for small-acreage countries. I have to say, one thing I found really useful at the beginning were the tips that popped up at the top of various pages. This was helpful for the initial stages (not so useful later on, though). The arrangement of links to the help pages on various topics were well placed. The effective (but very basic) help pages and tips is one aspect about this game that is actually very exceptional.

And so, I could easily learn that by playing Indy-communism, I would produce military and sell military for profit. Basically, this suited my strategy to have a lot of spies because I could produce a lot of spies too. I figured that in spite of being small I could still be successful and even deter attacks from larger countries. For I thought success of an op depended on the ratio of spies per acreage, not on the number of spies, and so even against larger players with way more spies than me I'd still be able to land ops and thus retaliate against them for attacks. What I didn't know was that threat of ops wasn't all that much a deterrence.

Nevertheless, ops did prove somewhat useful. As I spied on other players, I was able to learn what ratio of units other players had, and basically, a bit about how other more experienced players were playing the game. I think I learned a lot by spying.

That being said, I wanted to quit many times, and, once, even messaged the developers asking how to delete my account. While playing and trying to learn, I kept getting attacked while my own attacks failed or, even when successful, cost way to much. I just didn't understand how to attack / defend.

I had learned the importance of land-grabbing, but not really so much about how to do it exactly. One time I was successful I think I did too many on one particular guy. Afterwards, he sent a really nasty message and then did like 50 ABs on me, completely destroying all my buildings. That was one time I wanted to quit.

Another time I wanted to quit was when some really high-ranked player attacked me. I didn't know how to join GDI. I thought you had to pay real-life money for it, or bonus points or something, so didn't bother with GDI.

I had had what I had thought would be enough turrets to deter attacks. I had learned through spying that a lot of players around my NW had about 500k-1M or so of turrets. I also had what I thought were plenty of troops (100k). I had learned from that previous guy who AB'd me like 50 times that I should have a significant amount of tanks, too. Primarily, I thought I was safe because my net worth wasn't all that outrageous compared to my acreage and so I wasn't sticking out as an appetizing target.

And then, boom. I get attacked. And from the battle stats, I instantly wanted to quit. The first reason was it seemed from the battle stats that he had attacked me with only jets. This made absolutely no sense to me (I had been attacking with a mix of forces). Moreover, he lost fewer jets than he'd destroyed my forces and that seemed even more insane. I had tried a couple of my own attacks, noticing that even when I won a battle I would always lose a lot more units than the defender. Also, in calculating the cost of units lost, the amount of land I could get in successful attacks wasn't worth the trouble. It was almost better for me to keep exploring acres instead of land-grabbing. I was even attacking countries with higher net worth and more acres than me thinking I could get more acres in reward, but sometimes it seemed I was getting even fewer acres when if I attacked a smaller country. What I didn't know at the time was that I as attacking someone with a lot of ghost acres. I had even been using planned strikes with all of my forces to try and get the most land from each attack. But still, for what I got the cost wasn't worth it. I didn't understand that in this game 'overwhelming force' was a bad thing - that you would lose a ridiculous amount of forces if you used more than necessary. I thought that overwhelming force would allow me to lose fewer forces rather than more. In other games I've played, the greater the force overwhelms the enemy's the fewer losses you can expect per capita.

And then here comes this guy from way up there on leader board with his jets and nabbing a ridiculous amount of land from me, with only a few jets.

What really made me want to quit was it wasn't a bombing run, either. He'd actually nabbed land! What is this??? How does what is essentially a bombing run nab land? This is dumb. I quit.

Worse, yet, he nabbed a huge amount of land. I think that is when I might have messaged the developers asking how to delete.

Another time I wanted to delete was when some ops seemed to work while others seemed buggy. The espionage op threw me for a loop for a while. I'd do the op against a player, supposedly successfully, but it kept saying "you stole 0 technology points". It was not a fail, but, rather, a success. For whatever reason I was only able to steal 0 tech points. though.

Now, I had spied-out the target and from what I could tell he had lots of tech points (like even as much as 100 points in some fields :) ). So I figured he had tons of tech to steal. But repeatedly I was successfully stealing only 0. What is this?

I kept thinking I was doing something wrong and kept wasting ops on trying to steal tech, even against other players (who also seemed to have a lot of tech points), only to repeatedly 'successfully' steal 0 tech points each time.

I eventually came to think that there was some sort of bug or that the the espionage op had been disabled for this particular Tournament round. I came on forum trying to get some sort of explanation, but nothing came of it.

It wasn't until later on when I spied out someone who had 50k+ tech points in a tech field that I realized what the problem had been.

Basically, my experience with the game as a noob has been getting attacked, unsuccessfully defending such attacks, not understanding why I can't defend, attacking and failing, not understanding why attacks fail. Also, in the odd times when attacks might succeed I'd lose way too many forces to make attacking worth doing!

For the first round, I think all I did was explore and build turrets, oscillating between trying to figure out how all this worked and how to delete my account.

Second round I played was on Primary server. Now that I understand a few more things about how attacking / defending works, it's a little better.

Starting Team server now and learning even more.

Oh man... you aren't "Algae Bloom" in tourney, are you?

Sorry to hear it's been such an uphill battle. This is why I try to reach out to new players and help them as much as possible, we *all* have a better game when there are more players, and there will only be more players when people figure out how to play.

On the espionage thing - you have to have tech too. It's the same for research alliances. If you don't have a baseline of tech to build on you get no benefit. I have always felt that the espionage op is a bit underpowered - well not always, tech thief was a common strat at one point years and years ago - and yes, if you want to grab and deter grabs you should definitely have mostly jets and turrets, and some tanks.

Overall, as a noob, I have to say, first impression of this game is negative, although it has incredible potential. As you say, only if it attracts more players can this game be successful.

Solution 1: Find way to get people to use market more. Much of the potential for awesomeness for this games comes from the prospect of having an active, dependable market, with reasonable, stable prices, and high frequency of trading going on in terms of tech and goods. With more stable prices and higher frequency of trades comes with it more players willing to depend on the market to fulfill their strat objectives. And so solving this issue requires critical mass of players using it. A market with frequent trading opens the game up for more variety of strats and more varieties of variations of strats. And once that happens, the game's fun factor rises exponentially.

Solution 2: Make an alliance system that provides advantages for the noobish players / smaller countries rather than advantages for verteran players / larger countries. From what I can tell as a noob, you've got to be really lucky to get selected to join a gang of veteran players on any server. And getting selected the first round a noob plays is quite improbable, no? How soon do noobs realize that the only way to have any fun and really learn the game is to get in with a clique of veteran players somehow and that just isn't going to happen any time soon. How long will that noob stick around? Will they have the patience to stick it out 20 rounds before they get 'in' with the 'cool' crowd? They'll have to suffer an ongoing, humiliating, unjust disparity for many rounds: the advantages to joining a clan are huge simply due to being able to avoid getting attacked. And who primarily gets this benefit? The veteran players in established clans, not the noobs who actually need it. The thing is, the way it is set up presently provides a huge advantage to veteran players over noobs than to help noobs learn the game and have fun. Instead of making the alliance system an advantage to smaller counties / noob players, it seems all that was done to try and balance things a bit was to place a bunch of restrictions on the alliance system and to diminish the benefits of being in an alliance in the first place. In my honest, noobish, opinion, this is counterproductive since the alliance system could be the best thing about this game. I think forming groups of players under a clan holds most potential for fun game play. But only if it could be redesigned somehow to work for noobish players / smaller countries rather than against them. A simple suggestion might be to allow smaller net worth countries to have more / cheaper alliances or to incentivize larger countries allying smaller countries somehow.

Solution 3: Noobish players / smaller countries should have more of a spy advantage over larger countries. Ops should be beefed-up as well as effectiveness of spying according to ratio of number of spies to acreage, simply to provide more of a deterrence to larger countries / veteran players attacking noobish players / smaller countries. If a small net worth country can use a small number of spies to cause more damage against a larger country than it would be worth it for that larger country to attack the smaller one, you'd have 'balance'.

And so, yeah, overall, this game needs some work. Concepts need to change so as to attract enough new players to create the critical mass of activity necessary on markets and between alliances for this game's 'fun factor' rather than 'vote-buying' to provide for its marketing success.

Oh, and no, I wasn't Algae Bloom.

I think you'll find that many alliances/tags on the Alliance server would love to have some fresh blood, and have apparatuses (apparati? too lazy to google it) in place to help them learn the game. I was one of the trainers for NA for a long time previously, and many of the folks from there are spread out in other "noob friendly" tags now. There are a few tags, like LaF, Evo, and MD, that won't accept just anybody, but generally speaking if you apply you will get in, and then have people willing to help.

I think.

I haven't been around for 3 years, so I might be behind the times, but I doubt it.

This is VERY valuable information that the game developers and us as a community should look at closely.

Xeno, if you ever have any questions, i'd be more than happy to assist you.

Also, i've made an attack calculator that i'd be happy to share with you. It's in excel and it would help you understand what's going on.

There is also an attack calculator app.

And I am glad you aren't Algae Bloom, I ABd the crap out of that guy. :P

yea its for android and ios.

Can the calculator be incorporated into the game, maybe automatically, somehow? Like a little blurb by your 'military advisor' just next to the attack pane where you enter the target country number. As soon as you enter the number, next to it is another little number indicating 'estimated military force necessary'. If you put your mouse point over the number a little text bubble reads, "the estimated additional military force necessary to break through current target's defenses according to most recent intelligence".

And so, as a player inputs the numbers of his various forces to send on that attack, the force calculator number changes. For example, the player might see the force calculator initially at 10040 change to 7040 as he enters 3000 in the field for the number of soldiers he will use in the attack. As he enters 2500 jets, he sees the force calculator number go down to 2040. Maybe this number is in red, to indicate a warning that not enough force is being sent. After inputting 680 tanks, he sees the number go down to 0, which is in yellow, which indicates caution that probably a little more force may be needed to ensure success. And so the player decides to send along 200 more tanks than is necessary, just to make the force calculator number show up as a green -200. Confident he is most probably sending enough force to ensure success, he clicks send attack, and, yay, the noob didn't have to send all that much more force than was necessary, doesn't get as frustrated as he previously did by amount of losses, and number of failed attacks, sticks around longer, and maybe doesn't quit. EE gains in player-ship, and everyone is happier.

Alliances have tools like that incorporated into their sites, but it is not part of the game itself. I agree that might be a good idea. Post it in Bugs & Suggestions. :) The other factor, though, is that attacking isn't just straight math. There is a "fudge factor" that can make you fail, which decreases exponentially as you oversend. We call these failures "getting mehulled" in honor/anger for the game's creator, Mehul Patel.

As a noob, I don't know if I care enough about this game yet to want to spend the time and energy to help developers improve it. Also, my experience with game developers is that they don't really value insights from anyone who isn't a techie (which, proudly, I am not) and rarely do they value insights from even veteran players, let alone noobs. Generally, they don't really want to spend the time and money to really improve things anyway, and so, why bother?

I sincerely suspect that if mods / developers of this game have read my 'suggestions' they are most probably thinking about whether or not they should ban me from this game rather than take anything I have 'suggested' seriously.

Wrong. The developers of this game are players who saved it from extinction because they wanted to keep playing, and they are *very* open to suggestions from the community. They are not making their living from this game, and frankly if that was their plan they'd have gone bust years ago. If you can genuinely help them improve they will listen. I haven't chatted with them much recently but pang and qzjul both are decent dudes.

Also when are you going to join pinoy on alliance? :)

Xeno I think you are judging the game mechanics, mods, and developers too harshly before you know the basics of the game.
I understand you are frustrated, but let that frustration be the incentive to learn more. Do you really want to play a game that you can master in only a few days/weeks, or do you welcome the challenge of learning something other than a cookie-cutter process? That type of gameplay may attract some new players, but they (along with the vets) will quickly become bored.

After reading your attack calc suggestion, I don't like it. For one thing, after spending some time learning the game you can also learn to estimate the help your landgrab target's Defensive Allies will provide without needing to spy those countries, instead estimating just by looking at their NW, acres, and attack history. An automated attack calc can never do that for you and you'll forever be spending extra turns to get all those extra spy ops required by your auto-calculator. You'll lose out in the end, spending perhaps dozens of turns per set needlessly instead of learning when you need to spy and when it's not required. Turn efficiency is important.

To be honest I have no interest in a game that holds my hand throughout the learning process and becomes semi-automated. Part of the attraction of this game is that there are layers upon layers of unique strategies needed to play this game well, most of which can only become apparent _after_ learning the basics. Even the oldtimers find new ways to tweak and improve their game. Oh, and it's 100% free. All you need to contribute is a bit of brain power.

I hope you give yourself time to find, understand, and appreciate the nuances of this game.

This is a really good thread

I don't think so. I've played games like this before. The game's design is indicative of pretty much the same culture according to which its concept is construed. The problem is the foundational concepts by which the game has been constructed over the years. Making it more appealing would require rethinking some of these foundational concepts.



No.




Noted and I disagree.

Apparently, veteran players like calculating the near exact amount of force needed for their attacks so much that they've already gone ahead and made an excel sheet system on their own, which gives veteran players even more of an advantage over noobs.



This statement is indicative of the culture from which dysfunctional game concepts were constructed. Noobs are all for figuring stuff out on their own. That's part of the fun. They don't want anyone to hold their hand through the learning process. What they want is to have fun. And, presently, being pummeled by large countries owned by cliques of veteran players within a system where the only way to make it into their cliques is to do likewise and pummel other 'lesser' players is, ultimately, demeaning, and, well, not fun.

That's not all you need. You need to demean yourself to comply with a culture of brutality against the noob.



Thanks. I'll give it a try, but from first impressions, I don't see it as any different from other games that are built on what is a very pervasive culture of esteeming brutality against the weak as virtue.

Come on Xeno, how much effort did it take on your part to find me messaging you ways to improve your country? On some level newbies have to want to find the help necessary to get better. We can't make them come here and try to figure it out. You have given us some valuable feedback here but if you can't accept that there is indeed a culture of warring in this game that is, at its core, a war game, then I don't know what else to say.

The problem isn't that it's a war game; the problem is how the war is won.

we do try to go above and beyond to help the noobs.. and if you know the games history.. you know the original makers are long gone and this game was literally re-made by the players.

i <3 pang

c'mon Xeno lighten up :)

In the years I've been playing I've seen many new players find their way through the learning curve and become excellent players. You can too. If you are a veteran of 'games like this' then surely you realize how silly it is to have a new player enter the game's forums and, before even learning the basics of the game, suggest that the very foundational concepts of the game need reworking.

Suggestions on how to instruct new players are welcome, very welcome. But before suggesting changes to the game, you have to know the ramifications of those changes and you can't know that until you have some game knowledge.
If you were pummeled on the Tourney server, it may not be because a clique of players were conspiring against you. It may be that your country build was obviously weak and you were a low risk target. Or maybe it was because you were trying to steal their tech, a move which, if you're caught, almost always brings a harsh response.

There's a tremendous amount of helpful instruction on the Q&A forum http://www.earthempires.com/forum/questions-and-answers
and the Strategy forum
http://www.earthempires.com/forum/strategy-room

But you want to see changes implemented to the structure of the game before you have taken time to learn about the existing game mechanics.

You mentioned people need to use the market more. Why do you have the impression it is unused? Is it because you personally built a non-specialized country and tried to be self-sufficient? That doesn't work in this game.
Every single even semi-experienced player I know uses the market to sell some of what they produce in order to purchase what they don't (except casher, they produce cash and buy everything they need).

The public market is the heartbeat of this game and is completely player-driven. It can be fairly stable at times, and it can be volatile. It will definitely have trends based on what point in the set you are in (early, midset, late and end-of-set), whether or not there are a lot of ongoing wars, and the distribution of governments and strategies chosen by other players in any given set.
You want the market to be 'more stable', does that mean you would automate the market too? The public market shifts according to player supply and demand. Those shifts are due to the many variables you have yet to learn based on factors you do not yet fully know. Reading the market is another skill to be learned.

You were confused because your successful espionage spy ops didn't steal tech from other players who had tech. That means you didn't have any tech yourself, which means _you_ weren't using the market to purchase the tech relevant to your country build/strategy in order to make your country stronger and more productive with the acres you had.

These are noobie mistakes, we've all been there done that. We were all new at one time, and we had to learn the basics - and more - before giving in to frustration and insisting the very foundation of the game itself was flawed and should be overhauled to make it 'easier'.

To do well at this game isn't really all that difficult once you know the basics. To excel, you're going to have to put in a little more work, a little more thought. It's up to you.
But please, don't come here complaining that the game devs are not changing the game for you because it's too hard to learn and suggest they may 'ban you from the game' for making suggestions. That's just sillyfluff.
Reach out to other players w/out the drama and ask questions.

I know at least VicRattlehead and I have already sent you PMs with help tips. I'd wager you've had more offers of help as well. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed that your reply to me didn't ask any questions based on the info I'd already sent you, instead you are focused on stating that the game has to be fun for noobs in order to grow, That is true, but that's true for any new game you play. Part of the fun is learning the game. Then, if you have it in you, mastering it.

Learn the game first, then if you have ideas vetted through game experience offer thoughtful constructive criticism.

its been suggested (just like ingame tech calc has) but since there are external calcs qz hasn't seen reason to add those.

My impression about this game is from my experience in game as well forum, Wiki, etc..

From Roleplay forum:



If this is really how you play to win in this game, I don't want to be a part of it.




Wow. Brutal.





This game does not seem fun at all.



Honestly, I don't see why I should invest any time in a game like this.

Team server market has been very, very inactive.


Right, and it is enjoyable if you like to engage in brutality against weaker players. I don't like that sort of thing, and neither do most people.



Or how about I just leave and not play?

if you want to win you need to get land by grabbing, either farming untaggeds and countries barely in range or grabbing non-pacted or landtrade pacted teams/alliances and take a risk that you lose more on retal than you grabbed or you gain barely more than you lost (even with ghost acres). land was easy to get in old game due there were alot multies to grab (of course if grabbed wrong multie it was possible that upon next login attacker was dead). admins are testing bots to create land to be grabbed and that way help new players to get into game and not to get farmed to ground since day 3.

Xeno FYI I am among the leaders in all-time top ten finishes on this server and you know what strat I play the great majority of the time?
All explore. Or as near to it as I can, meaning I don't attack except in retaliation.

oh. how. brutal.

FYI cyref and braden as the leaders of top 10 s in this server
The strat I play most of the time is to grab but I try to help new players met a great guy last set called ship wreck cove who got suicides and Ford played untagged and told me not to grab him again or expect a parking lot at some point anyone who interacts with me I help if they want it but most don't welcome it after two to 3 hits

You and braden better make t 10 this set or I get 2nd place back and ingle is pretty darn consistent he should catch me for tnw before I catch braden

thought it would have been one of you from weedy making it last set

And

The set just started five days ago. Players are building the infrastructure of their new countries. If you had some experience you would understand that. Since the market is 100% player-driven (goods don't appear out of nowhere) of course supply/demand is lower in the early set. As I attempted to explain to you in an earlier post the market has trends depending on whether you are in early, mid, late, or end of set.

Market activity in the last 24 hours
Goods
type min price avg price max price amount
Troops $120 $125 $133 214,224
Jets $125 $133 $140 1,136,939
Turrets $127 $136 $155 4,175,807
Tanks $540 $544 $550 75,647
Bushels $31 $33 $34 9,602,035
Oil Barrels $100 $123 $140 238,138
Tech
type min price avg price max price amount
Military $2,500 $2,737 $3,000 2,807
Business $2,400 $2,589 $3,000 27,019
Residential $2,400 $2,646 $3,000 27,522
Agricultural $2,500 $2,935 $3,748 48,655
Warfare $3,000 $3,000 $3,000 384
Military Strategy $3,500 $3,500 $3,500 1,325
Weapons $2,500 $3,042 $3,300 10,861
Industrial $2,410 $2,864 $3,350 20,224
SDI $2,500 $2,500 $2,500 379


That seems to be what you wanted to do from the beginning anyway, doesn't it? You never wanted help from any experienced players, did you? You wanted the game devs to change the game to your demands now, or you'll quit?

Hi trainboy :)
I had a major brainfart last set, dropping 2400 empty acres instead of tearing down 2400 labs. Being the non-brutal kind of guy I am, I just couldn't make it to t10 after that, finishing 14th

This set who knows.. Xeno might AB me into the ground or steal all my tech.

Lol he needs tech and tanks to do that and he is worried there's none on the market

In all seriousness stick around and learn it then quit but don't quit before giving it a proper shot
We were all new once I was likely I played in a classroom at school so when someone grabbed us we farmed them when a friend was a 2m commie we were all like OMG wow how did you get so big